


Miraculously, The Percentages Shift

by ChaoticWeevil



Series: They're Lesbians, Harold [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Bucky Barnes Recovering, F/F, Female Bucky Barnes, Female Steve Rogers, Genderswap, God this is self indulgent as hell, Mental Health Issues, POV Lesbian Character, they're lesbians harold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 09:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16890231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaoticWeevil/pseuds/ChaoticWeevil
Summary: “No missions,” Steph says, keeping her voice steady, still low with sleep. “Nothing’s expected of you right now.”“Ah.” Bucky raises her eyebrows a degree, flicking her gaze down to the way Steph’s holding the bed sheets up over her bare chest. “So my last mission was to seduce you.”Bucky half-remembers things, Steph tries very hard to not overshare, and everyone falls asleep too quickly.





	Miraculously, The Percentages Shift

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who's so desperate for wlw content that she's genderswapping Everything lmao

Bucky’s mental state, as a whole, is a messy, cracked pie chart. One small slice of days where she wakes up and is the Winter Soldier, where she stalks the halls and keeps her boots laced up tight in the house, ready to flee. One ever-expanding half where she wakes up and is _herself_ and delights at uncovering new tidbits of memory and makes scrambled eggs for breakfast with a decadent amount of cheese. And there’s the remaining sliver where she wakes up in between, caught in a foggy mix of confusion. Steph reckons that if she was diligent enough, she could map the change in neatly patterned percentages, shrinking and growing.

But right now, with Bucky staring wide-eyed and muddled at her, Steph’s hyper-aware that the small sliver of the graph is growing and feeding off of itself in the meantime. Bucky hasn’t pulled herself out of bed yet, but Steph can’t tell if that’s because she knows she’s safe or because she’s frozen too still to move.

“Can you tell me your name?” Steph tries to ask, treading right up to the line of what is acceptable to ask this early in the morning and with little knowledge of who Bucky is right now. But then again, Steph’s hair is mussed up from Bucky’s fingers tangling up in it and her collarbones are dotted with light pink marks, so she doubts she looks threatening enough to warrant a bad reaction if the question is too far.

Bucky just deepens the furrow in her brow. She turns enough to examine the surrounding room. When she speaks, it’s with a garbled accent—Brooklyn mixed with rolling Soviet—but Steph doubts she’s aware enough to school her voice back into a trained generic American tone. “Do I have a mission?”

Answering a question with a question. That was a good sign, at least. Not ‘what is my mission,’ not ‘ _you_ are my mission,’ but doubt. Steph wants to smooth that away, though, she wants to melt out the creases between Bucky’s eyebrows. But she has to go _slow_ if she wants to manage that this morning.

“No missions,” she says, keeping her voice steady, still low with sleep. “Nothing’s expected of you right now.” Usually, she’d want to explain the entire situation then and there, but Bucky taught her otherwise. Not to overwhelm her with information that Bucky’d have to deign as a lie or a truth, just to let her come to her own conclusions, ask her own questions.

“Ah.” Bucky raises her eyebrows a degree, flicking her gaze down to the way Steph’s holding the bedsheets up over her bare chest. “So my last mission was to seduce you.”

That earns a flustered laugh from Steph, at least. Bucky’s own conclusions always erred on the side of bluntness. “Wasn’t a mission. No one tells me enough to seduce info out of me.” Steph can’t be embarrassed, though: Bucky’s distracted enough with feeling over the socket where her prosthetic was attached. She’d told Steph how HYDRA kept it on her at all times, leaving her constantly a weapon. These days, Bucky spends days without a prosthetic of any sort. Enjoys the freedom to reject weaponry.

Bucky pulled herself out of bed, raking her fingers through her cropped short hair and… Stopping, for one moment. She gently felt at her hair again. Cutting it had been Steph’s idea, since Bucky’d always wanted her hair as short as short could be. When she’d enlisted, hiding her name and her gender behind a front of masculinity, Steph cut her hair for her. Cooed over her handsome girl, even as the jealousy of not being able to follow her into war stung under Steph’s skin.

And six months ago, Steph cut her girl’s hair again. It served as a marker for time, Bucky had explained. HYDRA didn’t bother cutting their Asset’s hair, so it being short proved that Buck was either in her army days or in the 21st century with Steph, and either of those meant some semblance of self.

Right now, though, Bucky’s confusion just seemed doubled. She picked up Steph’s discarded shirt from the floor and tried to pull it on, made a disgruntled noise when she realized it didn’t fit right, then hunted down her own.

Steph sits up in bed slowly, keeping to the bed to prove she’s not making a single move to harm Bucky. Pulls her knees up to her chest and slowly blinks herself awake, waiting for another question to arise.

After Bucky checks the door to the bedroom and realizes that it’s not just unlocked, but that the wood itself is flimsy enough to strike down should the need arise, she relaxes. And sure enough, another statement bubbles up. “You look familiar.”

Steph lights up, just a little, even as she fumbles for her hair ties on the bed stand to at least attempt to get ready for the day. “I do?” she says. Just a gentle prompt, but even that’s enough for Bucky to scrunch her nose up, pressing the heels of her palms to her temples like she could squeeze the memory out.

“You were… Smaller. How did you--” A fragment of realization dawns over Bucky’s face and, miraculously, she laughs. Ruffles at her hair again, marvels in her prosthetic arm set on the dresser instead of fastened on her body with metal and grit. “I’m dreaming? Or this is… What decade is it? Aw, Steph, it’s you, isn’t it?”

Steph grinned, offering a shake of her head as quick as she could. “Not dreaming. We’re in the 21st century. Twenty-teens, or whatever we’re supposed to call it.”

“Well, shit!” Bucky climbs back into bed, still distinctly confused, but happy to retreat back to the warmth of the bed sheets, keeping her eyes locked on Steph’s face like she was the 8th wonder of the modern world. “Look at you, doll. Look at all that color in your cheeks. That ain’t a fever, right?”

Steph grins up at the ceiling as Bucky pushes her hand to her forehead. She’d protest, usually, if only as some habit from the old days—Bucky’d never let her go to work if she found out Steph had gotten sick again. Steph was lucky, though. Got to keep all the doting and that relieved sag to Bucky’s shoulders when Steph was, as usual these days, healthy as an ox.

Bucky lets herself melt back onto the bed, head tucked against Steph’s hip, probably hiding away enough to process. Or at least, that’s what Steph thinks she’s doing, until she hears the soft sound of Bucky starting to snore. That’s the good thing about these confused shades of grays: Bucky usually falls asleep the second she gets enough of a handle on the situation at hand to calm herself. Steph, for her own part, can’t help but smile to herself as she too sinks to the mattress, propping the two of their heads up on one of their too-soft pillows.

Bucky’s mental state, as a whole, is messy. Steph can’t seem to make herself mind, no matter the situation, because it always ends like this: the two of them back together, tangled up among sheets. Whether that drifted back to them in the 30s, after patching up Steph’s scraped hands from shoving some jerk and getting shoved back herself. Whether it was in the middle of the war, with Steph’s modified chorus girl getup folded next to Bucky’s bindings and mud-streaked uniform. Or now. The Cold War in one bed. Two girls deemed medical lost causes, miraculously alive, curled up against each other. Not too shabby of an ending. Steph could practically _feel_ her own pie chart of doubt and fear and love changing it’s percentages by the moment.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Mental Health Pie Chart of James Buchanan Barnes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043224) by [WeShallSee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeShallSee/pseuds/WeShallSee)




End file.
